Black box from crashed Lion Air plane recovered by Indonesian divers in first step to understanding cause of tragedy
- The Lion Air flight with 189 on board lost contact a few minutes after take-off, crashing moments later in the nation’s worst air disaster in two decades
- The fallout from the crash continues, with the carrier suspending a number of executives over the disaster
A black box from the crashed Lion Air jet has been recovered, authorities said Thursday, a find that could be critical to establishing why a brand new jet plunged into the Java Sea soon after take-off, killing 189 people on board.
Divers plucked the orange data recorder from the ocean and placed it in a plastic tub as search teams continued to scour the seabed for the fuselage of the Boeing-737 MAX 8, which crashed off Indonesia’s northern coast on Monday and had only been in service a few months.
“The flight data recorder contains the CSMU – Crash-Survivable Memory Unit – which is a very important element,” said Ony Suryo Wibowo, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Committee.
“We have received all the data including flight data from air navigation. We found that there was indeed a fault [in the aircraft], but to find the exact technical problem we will need the data from the black box.”
Earlier, National Search and Rescue Agency head Muhammad Syaugi confirmed the data recorder had been located 500 metres from the coordinates of the missing plane.
“We hope that this will shine a light [into the crash] to speed up the investigation … we hope that this is good news for the victims’ families,” he said.